Being a chaplain for the Salvation Army myself, I was very interested in
reading about Catherine Booth. I had read some about her husband William
but not much on her. I believe that she had good, strong, and well written
sermons. Catherine’s sermons “began with a biblical text and a challenging
title.”[1] This relates to McDill’s fourth skill naming the text idea. I also
believe that Catherine Booth did an excellent job with McDill’s fifth skill,
bridging from text to sermon. Catherine took some difficult concepts from
the Bible and made them understandable to her listeners. She preached on
sanctification, holiness, and restoration. These topics are sometimes difficult
to understand, yet as she put them into her sermon she made them
understandable to the public.
e e e e e e e e e Robert M ’Cheyne also was able to bridge the text to the
sermon as well as diagram his text structure. Although it is not exactly like
McDill’s he did write his sermon out and had one central theme. M ‘Cheyne
preached mainly on the glory and greatness of Christ as Christ is the main
thing in the gospel. He lived only 29 years but his legacy lives on.
e e e e e e e e e Philips Brooks stated that “Preaching is the communication of
truth by man to man. It has in two essential elements, truth, and personality.
Neither of those can it spare and still be preaching.”[2] Brooks wanted to
take truths from the Bible and personalize them so his listeners could
understand the context and content of the text. He wanted his listeners to
know God on a personal level. One of McDill’s stages he uses is naming the
text, which asks the preacher to decide on one topic and use that to build
the sermon on. Brooks did this very well.
e e e e e e e e e The last preacher I read was Billy Sunday. I enjoyed reading
about him and was amazed at the number of people who heard him speak
and who were influenced by him. Sunday was a professional baseball player
turned preacher who had never taken a course in theology. He spoke about
Christ and believed that faith in Christ was the answer to everything. I think
that Billy Sunday was masterful at bridging the text to the sermon by using
direct biblical authority and making his idea and his purpose the same. He
delivered powerful sermons around the country and supposedly was heard by
millions without the use of television, radio, or any other device we may use
now.
[1] Benjamin K. Forrest, Kevin L. King, Bill Curtis, Dwayne Millioni, Ed. A
Legacy of Preaching : Enlightenment to the Present Day. [Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Zondervan, 2018: 98]
[2] Ibid. 230
